Researchers in the US have used modified desktop printers to create the beginnings of living organs, New Scientist magazine reports.

By replacing cartridge ink with solutions containing hamster cells, they were able to "print" successive layers of cells on to glass slides in circular patterns, alternating with layers of gel.

Scientists warn that creating entire organs this way would be a vastly more complex undertaking. Vladimir Mironov of the Medical University of South Carolina, one of the researchers, said: "This could have the same kind of impact that Gutenberg's press did."

The team's work have yet to be peer-reviewed or published and there are two massive obstacles.

One is that organs are made out of many different kinds of cells. The other is that the printing would have to be carried out, the cells fuse, the gel removed, and nutrients begin flowing through the new structure within a couple of hours, otherwise it would die.

Despite their findings, the mainstream view remains that organs are likely to be grown from human stem cells, like plants from a cutting, rather than printed or built.

None the less, tissue engineer Anthony Atala, of Harvard Medical School in Boston, said: "I think this is extremely exciting technology that has the potential to overcome some of the major obstacles we have seen in the past."